


Seven Habits of Effective Aristocrats

by executrix



Category: Twelfth Night - Shakespeare
Genre: AU, Crossover, F/M, References to Shakespeare
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-20
Updated: 2014-12-20
Packaged: 2018-03-02 07:37:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,738
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2804681
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/executrix/pseuds/executrix
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written as a treat for waywren, The Onelie Begetter, who asked for a post-play story about what happens when two couples who married on very short acquaintance have to learn to live together, trust, and love. With a special guest appearance.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Seven Habits of Effective Aristocrats

**Author's Note:**

  * For [waywren](https://archiveofourown.org/users/waywren/gifts).



1  
In wholesome rural Illyria, unlike decadent Athens, when there is a royal wedding there is no need for entertainment between the wedding night supper and bedtime. So after the almonds and dried plums and apricots had been eaten, and the trenchers gathered up and given to the beggars at the gate, the Duke and Duchess merely retired to bed. Countess Olivia, already married for a month, and her husband got into their carriage and went home. (It had taken a month to provide the future Duchess with a wardrobe more suitable—and extensive—than her page’s livery.) The two chiefest ladies of Illyria should, theoretically, have been much in one another’s company, but the tenor of their past meetings embarrassed them both.

2  
Count Cesario—as he had to get used to everyone calling him—bent down and kissed Olivia’s forehead, where she lay sleeping on the day-bed. He wound through the corridors he was just learning to navigate, found the muniment-room, and sat down at the huge round table. He opened one of the small drawers set into the table. It was empty.

“When the tenants pay their rents, the money goes in there,” Feste said helpfully.

“Oh,” Sebastian said. He opened a few more drawers, all empty. However, the huge books of accounts stacked on top of the table were all too full. 

“Do you know anything about what to do with these things, Feste?”

“No, m’lord. Why would you have a fool for a factor? You want a bailiff who brings fear, not jollity. Your stables would be full of horses who had haw-haw, not hay.”

As Feste expanded on this theme, Sebastian thought resentfully that he was a plain fellow, from Messaline, where people just said what was on their minds and didn’t go making up flights of fancy. 

“And I don’t suppose…?”

“No,” Feste said. “The duke sent Curio after Malvolio to entreat him to a peace, but when he got to the Elephant, they told him that he had packed up and left. With that sea captain.”

“Really?” Sebastian said. He drew a sigh of relief. He hated to be ungrateful, but being a newlywed, and taking care of the affairs of a large estate, was difficult enough without Antonio bringing…complications.

“Then I suppose we’ll have to find another steward,” Sebastian said. Olivia already told him she would need a new waiting-gentlewoman. Lady Belch insisted on taking precedence next after the Countess herself, and was far too grand to look to the household’s supplies of small beer, meal, or linen. At least there was plenty of venison. As a presumable benedict, Sebastian’s brother-in-law had returned to the hunting interrupted by his anguished pursuit of…Sebastian’s wife. Sebastian had to keep reminding himself of this peculiar state of affairs.

3  
Every morning, Olivia went to Friar Baptista’s cell. She seldom felt the need for shrift (although she didn’t agree with Sebastian that she was “a perfect angel”) but she thought the friar was a wise man and valued his advice.

“I’m very glad you married, my lady,” he said. “You are right to honor your brother’s memory, but as a noblewoman, you owe a duty to your house, to your liege lord, and to your people. The Lord has not called you to the celibate state, and your brother is no longer alive to carry out these obligations. You must have sons, many sons.”

“You were right about the excess of my grief,” Olivia said. “When I look back, I wonder if all I wanted was an excuse I could give for not marrying the Duke Orsino.” 

She could hear the friar hesitating, and realized that he was as much her dependent as Feste was, and perhaps almost as worried about being cast off into an unfriendly world. So Olivia thought, but did not say, that she couldn’t imagine what Viola saw in Orsino, who she thought was a lazy fool, always blubbering away, far more concerned with his own feelings than his place in the world or his obligations. 

Olivia strode up the path linking the church to her house. She was surprised to see a stranger; few people came to this isolated manor. The young woman swept a deep curtsy (which pleased Olivia; from her exalted new place, Maria now could never be bothered to do more than lower her knees an inch or two in a sketch of obeisance), her face modestly inclined toward the ground. She held a letter in one outstretched hand. “Madame,” the girl said. “I am Maria’s…Lady Belch’s sister Caterina. The letter is from our mother. Well, our priest wrote it, explaining what our mother would say if she could write.”

For a moment, Olivia wondered who had really written it, but decided it didn’t matter.

“Lady, may I serve you? Mother hopes that I will thrive under this roof, and that you will help me too to a good husband, although I dare not hope he will be a kinsman of yours as well.” 

4  
Viola finished her song, and put down the lute.

“That was spendid,” Orsino said. “Your voice shows me glory, and you play like a true artist. Why did you never sing to me before?”

Viola reflected that she was never sure if her voice would be too high for the age of the boy she pretended to be. “There wasn’t time,” she said.

“That is true. Fate had in mind that our houses would be doubly joined, and the stock of Messaline would come to rule in Illyria. Come and sit by me, sweetling. When you first loved me, what did you see?” Orsino asked Viola.

“Your sadness,” Viola said. “You were like the pelican, feeding her young from her heart’s blood. A great nobleman, with every gift that Nature could provide. Strong, handsome, learned, bounteous to all, yet with a void in your heart that I wished I could fill.”

“And so you have. And when I saw you, when I was languid with despair, in your bright eyes I saw…youth. Energy. I envied that.”

“How I envied Olivia, that you longed for her, and she was fool enough to turn you away.”

“But I have always been Cupid’s clerk, so he looked out for me. I hated him for placing crosses in my quest, but then I was united with you, and knew it was meant in all the spheres of Time.”

5  
Sebastian looked up from one of the account books, the bane of his existence. There was a young man, dressed in deep mourning, standing silently in front of the table.

“Good sir, I am a kinsman of Malvolio’s. I have left my home, and wish to pay my respects to him and ask his help.”

Sebastian shrugged. “Well, he has gone away, I know not where. He made few friends. If he were here, I misdoubt he would help you. ”

“He made few friends at home, but perhaps a man’s name is his fate.”

“Then what, stranger, is your name?”

“Benvolio.”

“Ah. I’d never thought of it before, but Malvolio is an odd name to give a child. I wonder that a priest would speak it at the font.”

“My uncle was a merry man. This oft gives more joy to the audience than to those more closely joined to him.” (Feste, in the shadows, winced, but what was a poor workman to do? If he could not please all, he must please the one with the fattest purse or the most generous hand.) Benvolio shrugged, either to emphasize his point or to settle his heavy black velvet cloak where he could fasten it. He drew on his gloves. “Thank you, my lord. Without the help of my kinsman, I know not where to betake myself. Is there a religious house nearby where I might find a night’s shelter?”

“There is, but if your state is not so grand that you would not be a hireling, perhaps you might harbor here. Can you read?”

“If I know the letters and the language,” Benvolio said, wincing at the remembrance of someone else who had said it—a youth wearing a lapis-blue doublet, slashed to reveal bright yellow satin. An extravagant garment, but the tailor’s reckoning was one that the wearer died too soon to pay.

“And write?”

“Yes, in a fair hand.” Benvolio looked at the top account book, the open one pillowed on a pile of its fellows. “And cast accounts.”

“Lord bless us!” Sebastian said. “How came you to know all these things? Were you meant for a monk?”

“I thank the Lord, no!” Benvolio said. “But bad silver outweighs good blood in the huckster’s scales. My kinsman and I, younger sons of remote branches of a great house, are cast upon the waters, and hope, like Moses, to stand fair among the rulers.”

6  
The pleasures of Duke Orsino’s palace included an artificial lake. Viola tucked her skirts about her, and waited for Sebastian to take up the oars. “When I was a boy, I would have disputed you for that honor,” she said, knowing that her busk and stays kept her regally upright, quite unable to bend to wield an oar.

“That is not a phrase I would have expected to hear from you,” Sebastian said. “How strangely things have fallen out! I wonder if anyone wrote to our mother, to report our deaths? We must send to her at once, to say we are saved, and safe, and married…and rich. Do you think we should ask her to live with us? My house is modest compared to yours, but a palace compared to our father’s villa.”

“Perhaps she might visit—although only after the season of storms has safely passed! But she cannot live here, or what would become of Father’s patrimony?” 

“If Father hadn’t died, I would have liked to go for a soldier, for a while” Sebastian said. “And have adventures!”

“Beshrew me, it can well be said that we have had that,” Viola said.

“And then, I suppose, I would have come home and they would have looked for an heiress for me to marry.”

“You make that sound a hard fate. I would rather marry once than trudge behind a plough for all my days!” Viola said. 

“Sometimes I think a spade and mattock better suit my hand than a pen. I cannot bandy wit, or think of clever things to say even if I may rehearse them the night before. Even my lady wife fell in love with you, for making pretty speeches.”

“Ah, but she married you and not me, finding you the superior duelist.”

“Olivia is my life and my jewel, but I cannot speak of these things to her, only to you.”

“Well, you’ve known me all your life! But now you have the rest of your life to learn the way to speak to her. ‘My life and my jewel’—a promising beginning!”

“When did you know that you loved the Duke?”

“Oh, from the first moment of all! Somehow, when I asked if he were a bachelor, I knew that someday he would be no longer, and it would be because of me.”

“But what did—does—it mean to love him?”

“To see the sun rise and know that it is a day in his company. To shake my fist at his troubles, even if I am too weak to take them away. To listen to his table-talk when he is wise. For my heart to swell when his subjects come to him for justice, and tears come to his eyes when he helps a poor man who has been wronged. To go to bed when I am not yet weary, knowing that I will be tired betimes, and because I am his wife this is right and good.”

“Well, certainly, the last part for me as well! I think Olivia is very beautiful, but does not everyone think that? It might be more merit if my dame were lovely in my eyes, when everyone else called her marvelous ill-favored. If I must be absent, I wish I were with her. If I am uncertain of what to do, I wish I had her counsel. My blood is not as good as hers, and I brought her no riches, so I long above all things to be a good husband to her. But what does that mean?”

“Not to be angry with her when something someone else has done angers you. Not to neglect her and the children God sends you for your own pleasures, or even the business of the estate. To be a good vassal to my lord Duke, and a good lord to those below you. And never,” Viola said, thinking of a conversation when perhaps Orsino showed himself to be merely, imperfectly mortal, “Discourse to her of how women behave or how we think.” 

“So I think that I begin to do what you call love her.”

“When you are certain, tell her, and repeat it as often as that feeling returns to your heart—as it will, and you will feel it nearly as often as you feel your heart beat. Indeed, it is in times of fear or action that you will feel both!”

“But should I tell her that I did not love her when I married her—or, indeed, when she summoned a priest and married me before I had time to do anything but decide that she was not mad?”

“Oh, heaven forfend,” Viola said. “I don’t think she’d like to hear it, at all. I don’t think Olivia has much practice in being crossed, or a great desire to take up the practice, and I think she would remember “I loved you not” and forget “I love you now.”

7  
Benvolio saw Caterina struggle up the path, a laden basket in each hand. He rushed over, weighing both baskets in his hands before he took the heavier one.

“I’m sorry!” he said. “If I had known, I would have sent a servingman to help you. Next time you go to market, go to the stable. Have the horsemaster put panniers on one of the donkeys.”

“Thank you, sir, you are kind. Above all for one who, they tell me, hates all ladies.”

“Oh, no!” he said. “I cannot hate them, for they are the most beautiful thing in all that is created.”

“And they tell me you are a misanthrope, who has abjured his native land.”

“I have left a place where every stone, a reminder of tragedy, seems daubed with blood.”

The clouds drew closer together. Caterina and Benvolio paused for breath, putting down the baskets and seating themselves on a low stone wall. “Although,” he said, “I do miss the warmth of the sun in Verona.”

“And you are a man who has left his family.”

“My country, that beautiful place of lemons and the golden sun that breeds them, has taken away my family. My dearest kinsman, dead and in Perdition, a murderer and a suicide. His mother, dead of grief. Another of my house, stabbed in a street brawl. Even my kinsman’s wife, a fair maid for all she was a Capulet, is dead. So let me tell you what I hate. I hate love. For all that came about was the work of an instant, when my cousin and a girl looked at one another and their doom was sealed.”

Caterina untied the ribbon that cinctured his cloak, unrolled a few yards of the ample velvet, and sat down on the wall close to him. She gestured, and he drew the cloak closed, sheltering both of them.

_The man who seeks for love would find a glass,  
Displaying virtues for his deep reflection,  
Yet all too often, he beholds an ass,  
His long ears provide only deception.  
The woman who would love yields all to him,  
(Or Him, if penned in monkish solitude)  
Joan’s or my lady’s fate is grand, or grim,  
If her life’s lord is paragon or rude.  
Exhausted, men and women fain would fall  
Thus though blind the baby seldom misses,  
And to that ship, the ark, walk one and all.  
Lines stem from loins, cradles spring from kisses.  
Love flees from those who only seek a bed,  
But wings to those who fly from love instead._


End file.
